SOMERVILLE - The owners of the Aeronaut Brewing Company decided they wanted their business to be a lot more than just a brewery.

Co-founder Ben Holmes wants Aeronaut to be an incubator of other new businesses that will, collectively, become a community unto itself.

Located at 14 Tyler St., the brewery officially opened its doors two months ago. Holmes said the idea was to be in a space that was large enough for Aeronaut and other businesses, too.

"We rented the space that was about three times larger than we needed," said Holmes, a graduate student in computational biology at MIT in Cambridge. "It was key; we didn't want to be on our own. We didn't want to just start a brewery. We wanted to start a community of sustainable businesses."

Holmes founded Aeronaut along with Ronn Friedlander and Dan Rassi, who have also studied various sciences, wanting to do something that "had an impact on the world."

Currently, Aeronaut is in a 12,000-square-foot space, but will be expanding into an 18,000-square-foot area that will combine "food, beer and sciences."

Inside the building is the Food Hub at Aeronaut, which is home to several food-related businesses. They include Barismo Coffee Roasters, a local coffee roaster; Something Gud, which delivers farmers market-type foods to homes and will be running a four-day-a-week farmers market at Aeronaut; Somerville Chocolate, a brand-new local chocolatier; Bloom Brick Urban Agriculture, which features hydroponically grown micro greens; and, coming soon, Taste Encounter, a farm-to-table restaurant which will feature a 10-course meal paired with beer or wine.

"It's really a community building," Holmes said.

As the founders have their roots in science, half of the building will be a science lab that will have public access, Holmes said.

Although there seems like there's a lot going on at Aeronaut, it's still a brewery, and it brews several beers. It typically has five to eight beers on tap at a time and hopes to have about 10 on draft this fall.

The beers aren't limited to one style, or inspired by any one country's brewing history.

"We pretty much go without limit around the world," said Holmes. "Right now, we have three French beers, and we will have three German beers."

Holmes said they don't always have the same beers on tap, but they hope to always have the Saison of the Western Ghats, a 4.7-percent ABV French-style saison, and Armadillo, a 4 percent ABV hoppy table beer.

The beers are available at the brewery's taproom. Along with pints of the beer, people can buy 32-ounce growlers to bring home.

Aeronaut also hosts several of its own events. Recently, it had an event called "Bring Your Own Beemer," a projector party with 28 different artists projecting their own works on the walls at the brewery. It will have a Halloween Party and a "Day of the Fluff" festival to honor the Somerville creation.

Page 2 of 2 - "It's awesome," Holmes said. "We wanted to be with people and share the results of our science."

Email Norman Miller at nmiller@wickedlocal.com or call 508-626-3823. Check out the Beer Nut blog at blogs.wickedlocal.com/beernut. Follow him on Twitter at @realbeernut. Also check out "Norman Miller, The Beer Nut" on Facebook.